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From: tell@oscar.cs.unc.edu (Stephen Tell)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Project Enclosures
Message-ID: <11458@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 16 Jan 90 02:18:32 GMT
References: <126@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> <25869@cup.portal.com>
Sender: news@thorin.cs.unc.edu
Reply-To: tell@oscar.cs.unc.edu (Stephen Tell)
Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 27

In article <25869@cup.portal.com> mmm@cup.portal.com (Mark Robert Thorson) writes:
>You can also cut it with a straight handsaw, like what you would use on
>plywood.  That produces a cleaner edge.  Most power tools don't work very
>well on Plexiglas.

Funny you should mention plywood; I've gotten good results using a plywood
type blade in a table saw on 1/8th inch acrylic.  The idea is to get a large
number of teeth per inch.  With a good guide/fence on the table saw, nice
straight guts and right angles are easy to do.

If you're using the standard "glue" for the stuff, which is really a solvent
that "welds" the two surfaces together in a few seconds, good cuts are
important.  This joining process is very poor at filling gaps, but produces
good results.

I think that the reason power toos cause trouble is that the acrylic is
a rather poor conductor of heat, so if the blade heats up, the heat has
nowhere to go (unlike cutting metal, for instance).  If the workpiece melts,
things get rather difficult - it may weld back together after the saw
blade passes by!  Use care when drilling also; similar problems can occur.
I haven't quite perfected the art of drilling the stuff myself.

Steve
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Steve Tell					tell@wsmail.cs.unc.edu
CS Grad Student, UNC Chapel Hill.		919-968-1792
Former chief engineer, Duke Union Community Television, Durham, NC.